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Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 07:57:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Thomas David Rivers <ponds!rivers@dg-rtp.dg.com>
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To: ponds!freefall.cdrom.com!freebsd-hackers
Subject: Re: More info on slow "rm" times with 2.2.1+.
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David Greene writes:
> 
>    The answer to this is that FreeBSD, like many (most?) other operating
> systems, doesn't handle very large directories very well. When I was looking
> into similar slowness on a different news server, I found that the
> control.cancel newsgroup directory was more than 10MB large! I think it
> contained more than 200,000 files, but I don't recall the exact number.

 Ah... I haven't seen my own follow ups yet; you may already know
this... 

 But, apparently, it's 2.2.x that doesn't handle large directories
very well - 2.1.7 seems to work like a champ.

 It was taking 3-5 seconds to remove a file in a 300-400 entry directory
with 2.2.1.  It took only 3 seconds to remove all 300+ files with 2.1.7.
[I booted up 2.1.7 with a fixit floppy, mounted the news partition
and just did a "rm *" in control - *poof, they are all gone...]

 This is most definately a 2.2.x phenomenon...

	- Dave Rivers -